Chapter 25: Luke’s Suggestion.

(CAPTAIN MAX LANDER SETS FORTH THE CURIOUS ADVENTURE WHICH MARKED THE VOYAGE OF THE “FLYING SCUD.”)

I’ve no faith in your old wives’ tales. Not I. But the luck was against us. Everything went wrong from the first. And there’s no getting away from the fact that we sailed on a Friday.

The weather in the Bay was filthy. Our engines went wrong in the Red Sea. We lay up at Aden for a week. There was a bill as long as my arm to pay. Then when we got out into the open the weather began again. Never had such a run! It was touch and go for our lives. One night, half-way between Ceylon and Sumatra, I thought it was the end. We had more than another touch off the Philippines. By the time we reached Yokohama we were a wreck—nothing less.

The ship ought to have been overhauled before we started. But the owners wouldn’t see it. They insisted that a patch here, and a coat of paint there, would meet the case. But it didn’t. Not by a deal. As we soon found. At Aden, after all, the engines had only been tinkered. They went wrong again before we had been three days out. The weather we had would have tried the best work that ever came out of an engineer’s shop. Those nailed together pieces of rusty scrap iron worried the lives right out of us. If we had gone to the bottom they would have been to blame.

We were late at Yokohama. A lot. The agents didn’t like it, nor the consignees either. There were words. After all I’d gone through I wasn’t in a mood to take a jacketing for what wasn’t any fault of mine. So I let them see. The result was that there were all round ructions. I admit that, under severe provocation, I did go farther than I intended. And I did not mean to knock old Lawrence down. But it was only by the mercy of God I had brought the ship into port at all. And it was hard lines to meet nothing but black looks, and words, because I hadn’t performed the impossible.

Lawrence resented my knocking him down. David Lawrence was our agent; a close-fisted, cantankerous Scotchman. I own I ought to have kept my hands off him. But when he started bullyragging me on my own deck, before the crew, as if I was something lower than a cabin boy, when I had had about enough of it, which wasn’t long, I let fly, and over he went.

I was sorry directly afterwards. And when he gave me to understand that not a ha’porth of stuff should come aboard that boat while I was in command, I swallowed the bile and started to apologise. Not much good came of that. As soon as my nose was inside his office he began rubbing me the wrong way. The end of it was that I nearly knocked him down again. And should have quite if his clerks hadn’t kept me off him. After that I knew the game was up. I knew that nothing worth having would come my way at Yokohama. I got drunk for the first time in my life. The ship was eating her head off for port dues. I slipped her moorings and ran out to sea.

What I was to do I had not the faintest notion. I was perfectly well aware that I might as well sink her where she was as to take her back as good as empty. If I didn’t lose my certificate it would be no further use to me, because that would be the last command that I should ever have. I took her to Hong Kong on the off chance of picking something up. But, as I had half expected, news of The Flying Scud had travelled ahead. There was nothing but the cold shoulder waiting for me all along the line. I did get a few odds and ends, but nothing worth speaking of, and I cleared out of Hong Kong for the same reason I had cleared out of Yokohama.

Yet, though I should scarcely have thought it possible, there was worse to follow.